Most Helpful Customer Reviews

To begin, I'm not the biggest "alien" fan. However, I absolutely love the "found footage" genre of films and will take a chance on pretty much any I come across. Let me be clear, the problem with this movie ISN'T in the production, acting, sound, or anything of that nature. The problem I had with the film was the fact that I just didn't find it all that interesting. Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what could have been done to remedy this problem? The entire movie is based on "found footage" recorded by the youngest member of the Morris family, Riley (Riley Polanski). Riley suffers from a form of autism and the video camcorder helps him cope with the world around him. It's a pretty straight forward ride here.

The Morris family is on vacation and decides to take a trip to Brown Mountain in North Carolina. While camping one night, Riley is awaken by strange lights. He wakes his brother, Corey (Corey Eid) and sister, Jillian (Jillain Clare) to inspect what he is looking at. Three lights appear in the sky overhead and quickly shoot out of sight. This is apparently an ongoing phenomenon that occurs in North Carolina and is simply known as the Brown Mountain Lights.

Riley continues to film the vacation and eventually the family gets lost in twisty mountain roads. When they come upon a tunnel, they discover numerous cars that have been vacated suddenly and are blocking the road ahead. When their dad, Peter (Peter Holden) gets out to inspect, the 3 guys head inside while Jillian and her mom, Katie (Katherine Sigismund) go for a bathroom break. While inside the tunnel the 3 come face to face with the problem.

From here on out, it's basically footage of Riley and family rushing around and LOTS of super bright, blue lights shining through a variety of objects.Read more ›

This movie captures a good idea, but does so very poorly. There are a couple good scenes here but they are largely outweighed by the bad and the very bad. I give this two disfigured alien thumbs down.

This found footage film opens with the following caption: "The following is actual leaked footage from the US Air Force." It's cute when obviously untrue stories masquerade as true stories just to add mood or generate buzz. The Fourth Kind (2009) had people rushing to Google to check stats of people disappearing and FBI investigations in Gnome, Alaska. They did it well. Although that was about all they did well.

"For centuries, people have been disappearing on and around Brown Mountain, North Carolina. Locals believe the disappearances are directly linked with sightings of THE BROWN MOUNTAIN LIGHTS." News casts, accounts from locals and witnesses, and testimonials from paranormal experts follow. These segments represent one of few things that were done well in this movie.

A family goes on a camping trip in the Brown Mountains. The parents and kids are somewhat likable, normal people and their trip is filmed by their youngest son. On their first night, the kids see lights in the sky moving in a way no star possibly could.

The acting is far from top notch. When the father gets them lost and loses his temper his behavior is totally unfounded. When they run out of gas (which I don't see happening on a family road trip into the mountains) the family tension escalates and the father becomes rage-y, again unconvincingly. Then again, even if they nailed their lines, the writing wasn't great either.Read more ›

I actually liked this movie, but I want to start off by noting that it is a found footage movie, something that should be obvious from watching the trailer. If found footage movies aren't you're thing, then look elsewhere for your entertainment this evening. If you're already sick of the found footage genre, and wish it would go away, then don't bother watching this. The number of found footage movies seems to have really taken off in the last few years, I suppose related to the smaller budget and equipment needed to produce them,and "Alien Abduction" in my opinion, is a good entry into the genre. I'm in no way an expert on the technical aspects of movie making, but I felt this one was well done. There was nothing Oscar worthy here of course, but I didn't notice anything that broke my immersion while watching it, and that, in my book, is a win. I thought the movie visually looked quite nice, and I felt the writing and acting were believable. I'm always impressed when a found footage movie can come up with a new reason why the camera should remain on during the events occurring onscreen, and I thought the idea of the camera operator being a young autistic boy who uses it as a means of helping him deal with his environment and emotions rather clever. The creature effects I thought fell into the "less is more category". The aliens aren't onscreen often, and when you do see them, you really don't get much more than a quick glance of only a hand or a face. I found nothing wrong with this, however. They're aliens. In a movie. We've seen aliens in a movie before, we know what they look like, no need to re-invent the wheel. And, unless you plan on bringing something new and awesome into the mix, why waste anymore of an already small budget on something you really don't need? All in all, yeah, it's worth the seven bucks to watch.